by Tracy Groot
He started out with, “Where’s your hat, Harris?”
“Traded it for some sweet potatoes. Wish I had it back.”
“And what happened to your lip?”
“Weakest part got attacked. Before I came I had a bust lip.”
“Get in a fight again?”
“Something like that. Once here, it took infection.”
“Why don’t you have a doctor take a look at that?”
“Oh, I tried. It’s not bad enough.”
“They’re refusing you treatment?”
“No, but other boys are in far worse straits. I felt ashamed, waiting in the sick call line, so I quit it.”
The swollen, oozing lower lip worried Lew. A black spot within a ring of white infection was either dried blood or something worse. “That would get you out of the ironmongery for a week.” Lew stopped walking. “Harris—what happened here?”
“Come on, brother.”
“What happened to you? Why have you lost so much weight? Why is your lip like that, with no one to look after it? What kind of place is this?”
Harris pulled him back into step. “I told you, lad—today, you don’t speculate. Plenty of time for that. Hotel Ford is not far, now. Though I suspect the colonel would find it a dubious honor that we’ve named it for him. Glad they siphon off the brass for elsewhere. Don’t expect most would make it here. ’Cept Colonel Ford. He’d make it, all right.”
“Hold up a minute,” Lew said slowly. “Don’t you know about Ford?” By his look, he didn’t. “Harris, Ford’s dead. Charley Reed, too.”
Harris stared, then looked away.
“We took a beating on Kennesaw, didn’t we,” he said thinly. “Seems we are blown off the earth, the 12th.”
Lew dreaded asking about the other five men in their mess. Messes became like little families. Only one in theirs had died early on, and Robert had plugged that hole. “Robert’s gone, too, Harris. He came back for me, and got it in the neck.”
“That I saw.”
“What about Dunn?”
“Killed. He was right next to me, and then he was gone.”
“Brewer?”
Harris hesitated, and then said, “Dead.”
“How’d he get it?”
Harris was about to answer, and then his face brightened. “Artie Van Slett’s alive. He’s a lodger at Hotel Ford. His leg is some bad, but I tell him every day I won’t let him die ’cause he owes me seven dollars.” He grinned, pushing up the burned red ridges of his face. “Same old Artie. His complaints will outlast his ailments. I’ll worry when he shuts up. Well, I guess that leaves only Jasper.” He looked hopefully at Lew, but Lew shook his head.
“I was hoping you’d know. Can’t remember the last time I saw him.”
Harris took it stoically, then gave a bright and false grin. “Well, if any of us made it, Jasper did. If he finds out we’re here you can bet he’ll come break us out. Or tell Sherman how to do it.” The false smile vanished, and he said mostly to himself, “Charley Reed, too? Oh, that is hard.”
“He died defending Ford from a Reb skulker.”
“Did he, now?” The bright false smile came back. “Well, and he was a corker, that lad.”
“The skulker got his own.”
It was the only news to get Harris’s true attention. “Did he, now? I hope you paid those honors.”
“Nope. I’d thrown away my last shot. He’d drawn on me with two pistols, Colonel Ford’s own, and I had time only to think what a sour arrangement to be killed by my own colonel’s guns. Then all of a sudden out of the woods comes a Johnny Reb just a-blazing. Blasted him right off his perch, and when he tried to get up, blasted him again.”
But Harris was not surprised. “Aye—must’ve been him who struck the deal with that dirty Captain Graves, the lowdown piece of . . .” and Harris performed one of his legendary feats of profanity, cussing the Rebel captain up one slope and down the other. “You saved your own life with your banter, lad. You and that young Reb were going at it when you said something that got his fancy. He laughed and laughed. Kept repeating what you said. I can’t remember what it was. It was not a common word.”
“Perpetuity,” Lew said absently.
“That was it.”
“Harris . . . what deal did he strike?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Flat-out refused.”
“Well, isn’t that somethin’. A Johnny Reb with courage and grace.”
“We always knew they had courage.”
“Not this kind. You’d killed the friend of that captain, and he proposed that anyone who killed you should get himself fifty Federal greenbacks. I didn’t have real difficulty with that, until he said, ‘Get him to surrender. Once you take him prisoner, shoot him.’ Well, I humbly offered a contrasting view on this proposal, but the piece of—” more legendary profanity—“was obstinate. He even shocked the other Johnnies with this cowardly tack. Then the one with the yellow hair says, ‘Captain Graves, you let me collect this blue belly. Do him no harm, and I will reenlist.’”
“Reenlist . . . ,” Lew said uncertainly, an awful feeling coming to his gut.
“Well, this Johnny was due to muster out, and Captain Graves had a hard time getting the boys in his company to reenlist ’cause no one liked him—this I learned later from a Reb who escorted me and Artie here. Well, this captain seemed keen on the soldiering qualities of that particular Johnny, so he agreed readily. Made him sign a paper. And I’ve been lookin’ for you ever since.”
“That stupid—”
“I think it was uncommon nice.”
“He traded three more years of his life for—?” Lew couldn’t think straight. “What’s reenlistment in the Confederate army? Is it three years, same as us?”
“Three years.”
“That—” He could only make a fist.
Harris slapped him on the back. “Someday I hope to buy the lad a drink.”
“You think that will happen?” Lew snapped. “He survived this miserable war for three years, same as you and me—you think he’ll manage it twice?” Lew looked around at the jostling press of humanity. “You think my children will see their father again? You think Carrie—?”
“Pack ’em away, Lew,” Harris said. “They don’t belong here. Our war has changed. We’ll get a plan for survival, we’ll stick to it, and we’ll stick to each other. That’s what the old-timers say.” A man pushed into Harris, Harris pushed him back. “Some try and do it on their own. Look at them, look at their faces. They are alone in this great festering wound. Some survive that way, but not many.”
His tone grew soft. “Pack ’em away, Lew, the living and the dead. Your family. Robert, Dunn. Brewer and Ford. And that bonny Charley Reed. We’ll put all we have into outlasting this place. We’ll unpack ’em, one day, in a place fit for it.”
7
THE NEXT DAY, Violet returned to Andersonville.
She knew enough to steer clear of the prison, especially since she had Lily along; they were going only to put up and distribute the handbills they had made, inviting the town to an Indignation Meeting on Tuesday Night on the Pleasantly Situated Lawn at the Home of Doctor Norton Stiles and Family, inaugurating a New Society called The Friends of Andersonville Prison.
Violet thought it especially important that the military officials in Andersonville be apprised of the meeting. She had derived a grim sort of pleasure at the thought of their reading the handbill. If she worded the document in such a way that culpability seemed to be laid directly upon local officials for the Appalling Conditions of Starvation and Neglect of Human Beings incarcerated in the Andersonville Prison, well, as Hettie Dixon said, Truth hurts.
“P. G. T. Beauregard wouldn’t put up with it,” Lily had firmly avowed. A family meeting last night brought all, including Ellen, into the truth of Andersonville. The idea of organizing a committee to come to the aid of the starving wretches, Yankee though they be, had found such a welcome that Violet br
oke down into tears. It prompted an immediate reaction from the twins, Rosie and Daisy, who offered to go without okra if it could help them out, and from Posey, who declared that she loved the poor starving Yankees even if it sent her to hell.
Mother, after she had dried her eyes, predictably took charge. “We will have the first meeting Tuesday night. You must write on the handbill for folks to bring their own blankets to spread on the lawn, for I fear we do not have enough. I do worry about refreshment; there isn’t enough loaf sugar for decent cakes. We will have to resort to the sorghum syrup. I wish I could prophesy as to how many will attend; gingersnaps, then, for if we bake too many they will keep, though I am sorely tired of gingersnaps.”
Because yesterday’s trials had exhausted her and had produced a queasy stomach and a headache, Violet retired early and did not consult her father on the wording of the handbill. She rose late, and he was already gone to Macon with the other doctors of Americus for a forum about the conditions of government impressment for the civilian medical profession.
She had asked Mother to listen to what she composed for the handbill, and Mother had warmly approved, noting how admirably Violet managed to say things, and felt sure that it would find a sympathetic audience.
Violet, Lily, and Mother copied the sentences on pages carefully torn from Papa’s old medical journals, as no paper suitable for handbills was to be had in all of Americus. If she felt a twinge of doubt that perhaps some of the verbiage was going too far, she consigned it to the pit from whence it came, and assured herself that the conditions of the prison proved no one had gone far enough.
Lily and Violet put up five bills in the town square of Americus, four on the corner water oaks, and one on the podium where the Americus Brass Band played. They put one on the bulletin board outside the depot, and one in the depot itself. Silas Runcorn had read the bill and kept his counsel. Violet was disappointed. And if she had hoped to get a few free fares to Andersonville since the train was going there anyway, not to mention the fact that her father owned shares of stock in the Southwestern Railroad, she was disappointed in this as well.
“I’ve never been to Andersonville alone,” Lily said, excited.
“You aren’t alone,” Violet pointed out.
“Same as,” Lily said, leaning over Violet to look out of the window as the train came into the Andersonville depot. “Mother’s not here.”
“We must stick together,” Violet said, taking Lily’s arm as they stepped down to the platform. “There are nothing but soldiers here, most of them Yankees bound for captivity, and you must remember that however they have been maltreated at the prison, they remain our enemy and must be afforded all the caution given a sleeping bull. The good men of the Confederate army would never allow anything to happen to us, but we must not give them undue reason to defend us.”
“Oh, he’s handsome,” Lily whispered. “The one by the barrel.”
Lily was fifteen, and would find the barrel handsome.
“Think of it,” Violet said as they made their way to the commissary building. “If our brother had lived he would be here, perhaps escorting these men—” to their doom, she nearly said.
“Decidedly not,” Lily said. “He would have served with Jeb Stuart and saved his life from that hateful bullet. Perhaps he would have saved Ben.” She glanced at Violet. “Does it pain you to hear his name?” It was a rare moment of the consideration of feelings other than her own, and Violet was pleased for her sister’s progress.
“Not as much,” Violet said.
Ben Robinson, Violet’s fiancé, had gone to war in one of the first units organized in Americus, the Sumter Flying Artillery. The Americus Brass Band had led the procession to the depot, and off the Sumter County boys went in a wake of waving handkerchiefs and tears. No one had doubted they would all come home as they left, handsome and whole. Ben was killed with five others from his unit on December 20, 1861, at Dranesville, Fairfax County, Virginia. A caisson had blown up and took Ben with it. He was buried in Virginia, where exactly, Violet did not care to know. They’d grown up together. They were betrothed. He was gone, and that was that.
“Do you remember George?” Lily said wistfully. “I wish I did.”
“I remember.” Violet was six, a year younger than Posey, when little George died. It was the first and the last time she had seen Papa cry. Such a terrible wrenching in Violet’s chest it had produced. She had never seen a man cry. She never thought they could.
They made it through the gauntlet of staring men, both North and South, and came into the welcome dimness of the commissary building. Lily pulled back her bonnet and looked about with interest. Violet went to the counter behind which the same clerk stood.
“Good day, Miss Stiles,” he said pleasantly.
“Good day. I have a bill here I would like to post. Is there a public area where it will be seen?”
“Well, ah . . .” He looked around, and then pointed. “I reckon you can tack it to that square pillar as you come in.”
Violet looked. It was a thick load-bearing square post, and the tan of the paper would stand out noticeably from the whitewash. “Thank you, that’ll answer just fine.” She held one out. “Would you like to read it? I encourage you to come. It’s to help those poor boys in the prison.”
The young man took the bill. “You mean the hospital?”
“That, too.”
He read the bill, and Violet watched his growing dismay with growing dismay. He looked at her. “The prison? I thought you was talking about the Confederate hospital, just up the tracks.”
“That one is sufficiently cared for,” Violet said icily. “Relief societies to the moon and back for that one.” She should know, she had run a benefit just last month.
He began to shake his head. “Oh, I don’t think you can put this up. Not as written. General Winder won’t like it.”
“General Winder won’t like it?” Violet snatched the bill back. “How do you think those boys like starving? Do you think they like scurvy? Have you seen the effect?”
“Why, Corporal Womack. What have you done to court the displeasure of this lovely young lady?”
A tall man with black hair and very pale eyes smiled down at Violet. He lifted his brown derby and must have thought his pale eyes to be quite something, for they stayed on Violet’s face as if expecting a blush. He was handsome, she supposed, but his lips were spare; when his face made to be pleasant, they disappeared, leaving behind a smile she did not trust.
He looked at Corporal Womack, then at the bill in her hands.
“May I?”
Reluctantly, she gave it to him.
He was all in brown, the derby, the vest, the jacket, the trousers, the leather shoes. He was probably broiling, and the style was not at all Southern. She wondered if he were one of those detectives General Winder had brought down from Richmond.
He read the handbill. Something in his face changed, and Violet did not like it.
He turned the pale eyes, which he supposed of devastating effect, upon her. She matched the stare and plucked the bill from his hands.
“Are you from Richmond?” she asked.
“Baltimore. You are Miss Stiles?” His accent was decidedly Northern. “The one who took a turn yesterday?”
Now the blush came, and she busied herself with counting the handbills. “Yes. I’m better now, thank you.”
“I can see that.” He looked her over with a frankness bordering on impertinence. “Captain Wirz was quite concerned.”
“Was he? I would rather he concern himself with those poor men in that stockade.”
“I wouldn’t put up those handbills if I were you.”
Violet’s heart picked up pace. She didn’t know what to say.
“She can put ’em up if she wants to,” said Corporal Womack, his voice high and strident. The young man’s eyes were a little wide. “Gimme that thing, Miss Stiles.”
She handed him a bill, and he rummaged beneath the counter for
a hammer and nails. He marched to the square post and tacked it up in the center. Then he came back to the counter swinging the hammer in a rakish way. “There you are, Miss Stiles.”
“Thank you, Mr. Womack,” Violet said archly.
“A pleasure de-vine,” he said, eyes fastened on the Baltimore dandy as he tossed the hammer to the shelf.
“Miss Stiles, my name is Joseph T. Howard.” He lifted the derby again. “I wish to acquaint you with it, for I will surely be at that meeting. Your sort of meeting is just my sort of business.”
“And what business is that?”
The lip disappeared into a garish smile. “Why, the investigation of treasonous activities.”
“Treason? I expect you’ll have to take up with the authorities on that—for their treason against mankind.”
The pale eyes flickered. He walked away.
“Northern trash,” Corporal Womack muttered. Then he said, “Bully for you, Miss Stiles. ’Bout time someone put those uppity—” Then he saw Lily. She gazed at him with such open admiration that he blushed crimson. He swallowed, squared himself, and said, “Do you know, I just might come to that meetin’. To keep the peace and all. But Miss Stiles—I wouldn’t put any more of those up. You can bet someone’ll tear that one down before the end of the day. You don’t want—” He glanced at Lily.
“I don’t want what?”
He hesitated, and then said earnestly, “You don’t want to make things harder for your daddy. I don’t know what he’s thinking.” He looked at the handbills. “You best bail him out by not postin’ these at all. Them are dangerous words.”
“They aren’t his words, they’re mine,” Violet said quickly.
“Don’t matter, I suppose.”
She looked doubtfully at the papers. Then Lily was at her side. She slipped her hand around Violet’s arm and gave it a squeeze. She said to Corporal Womack, “Can we borrow your hammer and some nails?”
—
“Treason!” Violet said. “I declare! The idea of a foundational pillar of Americus embroiled in treason! A charter member of the First Methodist!”